Kitchen Queries

Welcome to Kitchen Queries, where the nigella.com team will answer your cooking or food related questions. We’d love you to submit some of your recipe problems, dilemmas or queries for us to get our teeth into!

Please note, we are only able to answer questions selected for publication and aren't able to enter into personal correspondence.

Latest Queries

Chocolate Guinness Cake

I have seen two conflicting things regarding the recipe for Chocolate Guinness Cake and I was wondering if you could clarify for me. Does it use large or medium eggs? And should the oven temperature be 180 or 170 degrees? Many thanks. Deane-Mae.

Posted by Deane-Mae. Answered on 17th Jul 2013 at 12.00

From the nigella team:

Nigella always uses UK large eggs in her recipes, unless otherwise stated. In her books there are always notes in the introduction mentioning that the eggs should be large and on the website the recipes tend to state that the eggs are large.

Nigella's own published recipe for the Chocolate Guinness Cake (from Feast, and also on her website) states that large eggs should be used and also gives the oven temperature as 180c/350F/gas mark 4.

We are not sure where you have seen different details for the eggs and the oven temperatures but we would always recommend using the recipes direct from Nigella's books or Nigella's own recipes published on her website, as these are the versions that have been tested by Nigella and her team.